I think I ended up as Forbes' business travel blogger because I’m the only Wharton MBA to become a travel writer. I grew up in New England and worked in finance in Tokyo before B-school. Later I moved to Los Angeles to work in the film industry.
In 1998, stunned by my only ever layoff, I began exercising skills (and, let's be frank, pleasures) I’d long left dormant: writing and traveling. A decade and a half later: so far, so good. In addition to Forbes, I’ve been published from Travel+Leisure and the Los Angeles Times to dozens of Lonely Planet titles. I can speak Japanese and French, read Korean menus and embarrass myself in Spanish, Italian and Chinese.
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The World's Rudest Nations For Travelers

Congratulations, my fellow Americans! We’re not the rudest nation on the planet. We’re not even in the top 5. USA! USA!

The travel search site Skyscanner.com surveyed its users about where the locals never smile and people are particularly unfriendly, and the nation with the most votes for rudest locals was…

Wait for it…

France (félicitations,mes amis!), followed by Russia. The survey received over 1,200 responses, 65 percent from the UK and Ireland, plus elsewhere in Europe, North America and Australia.

Rounding out the top five rudest countries were the UK, Germany and “Other” (those Others are the worst, don’t you think?). The US placed 7th, behind China.

Some of the perceived rudeness may be attributable to cultural differences rather than anything intentional. For example, says Tatiana Danilova, Skyscanner’s Russian Market Manager, “the Russian language is not as polite as English, so when Russians translate directly from Russian to English, it can sound rude to an English speaker even if they don’t mean it to.”

“We were surprised to see Russians come in second place,” says Skyscanner’s Travel Editor, Sam Baldwin. He attributes this in part to the “familiarity breeds contempt” phenomenon. Although Russia doesn’t compare with the Mediterranean as a tourist destination, as visa regulations have relaxed, Russian holidaymakers are increasingly flocking to the Mediterranean and coming into contact with people from other countries.

The same principle may apply to the French: “As our closest neighbors, there has long been a familiar rivalry between the UK and France,” Baldwin says, and the preponderance of responses from the British Isles may have contributed to this result. Still, Baldwin says, “Even the French acknowledge that the way they are perceived is not entirely without basis.” (In France’s defense, I’ve always found Parisians to be just as rude to each other as they are to foreigners. Outside of Paris – and even within the city – people can be as gracious as anywhere.)

The British, for their part, voted themselves “world’s worst tourists” in a previous Skyscanner survey.

The countries rated as having the least rude locals were Brazil, the Caribbean and the Philippines.

Skyscanner claims to be Europe’s leading travel search site, operating in over 25 languages with over 25 million visits and over 11 million unique visitors per month. It has offices in Edinburgh, Scotland and Singapore.

Here’s the complete list of responses:

Nationality

Percentage of votes

French

19.29

Russian

16.56

British

10.43

German

9.93

Other

6.37

Chinese

4.3

American

3.39

Spanish

3.15

Italian

2.24

Polish

2.24

Turkish

2.15

Indian

1.9

Swiss

1.9

Greek

1.74

Croatian

1.57

Austrian

1.41

Cypriot

1.24

Egyptian

1.24

Korean

1.24

Norwegian

0.99

Australian

0.91

Dutch

0.83

Irish

0.83

Swedish

0.83

Japanese

0.66

Danish

0.5

Canadian

0.41

New Zealander

0.41

Indonesian

0.41

Portuguese

0.33

Thai

0.25

Filipino

0.17

Caribbean

0.08

Brazilian

0.08

The travel search site Skyscanner.com asked where locals never smile and where people are particularly unfriendly, and the world’s rudest nation came up as…wait for it…France (félicitations,mes amis!), followed by Russia. The survey received over 1,200 responses, 65 percent from the UK and Ireland, plus elsewhere in Europe, North America and Australia.

Rounding out the top five rudest countries were the UK, Germany and “Other” (I find those Others just awful. Don’t you?). The US placed 7th, behind China.

Some of the perceived rudeness may be attributable to cultural differences rather than anything intentional. For example, says Tatiana Danilova, Skyscanner’s Russian Market Manager, “the Russian language is not as polite as English, so when Russians translate directly from Russian to English, it can sound rude to an English speaker even if they don’t mean it to.”

“We were surprised to see Russians come in second place,” says Baldwin. He attributes this in part to the “familiarity breeds contempt” phenomenon: as visa regulations have relaxed, more Russian holidaymakers flock to Mediterranean resorts, where they come into contact with other holidaymakers.

Another illustration of the principle: “As our closest neighbors, there has long been a familiar rivalry between the UK and France,” Baldwin says. “Even the French acknowledge that the way they are perceived is not entirely without basis.” And the British voted themselves “world’s worst tourists” in a previous Skyscanner survey.

Conversely, perhaps absence makes the heart grow fonder. The expensive Euro may be keeping Americans from traveling, explaining why, at least in this survey, “American” is not preceded by “ugly.”

The politest travelers in the survey came from Brazil, the Caribbean and the Philippines.

Skyscanner claims to be Europe’s leading travel search site, operating in over 25 languages with over 25 million visits and over 11 million unique visitors per month. It has offices in Edinburgh, Scotland and Singapore.

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Three cheers for the Filipinos as one one least-rude people in the world, hurray!

Now, our tourism can really take off if you just take away the kidnappings, bad roads, squatter shanties and uncollected garbage (not to mention our perennial flooding!!:).. seriously, we only have 1.04 rude Pinoy for every 1200 that a tourist meets (topped only by the Brazilians/Caribeans at 0.96 persons). The ruddest are the French (almost 1 in 5 french is rude, 20%!), followed by the British and Germans (1 in 10 are rude). Of the Asians, the chinese are the rudest (4 out of 100) while the rest are quite polite: Australia, Japan, NZ, Indonesia and Thailand (bet. 0.41 to 0.91), but 1 in 20 koreans (4.9%) are rude. In the ciuntry I am in now (Malaysia), 6.4 are rude out of 100 – i experienced this personally, hahah! Now, if only we pINOYS can convert this friendliness into tourist dollars?…..

The percentages indicated are the % of participants that voted for this country as “rude” in their point of view.

This does NOT mean that “1 in 5 french is rude”. This simply means that 1 out of 5 survey participants voted for France. This is probably a lot of them actually been to France, and therefore have some feedback on their experiences.

Interested in more statistical flaws in the survey? Look for our post on the subject.

(and yes, this might also mean that Philippines is not really the “nicest” place, but merely the one that got very little attention by those survey participants)

Australia is running away from American Samoa! Having beaten A.Samoa so badly A.Samoa made the world record for having points scored against them, Australia was afraid of losing it’s underdog status and switched leagues so they never play A.Samoa again…

Ben – you do have a point…these things are a not likely to help tourism, but you don’t see that everywhere you go. Also, most parts of the Philippines are perfectly safe. Are there some simple things the Government could do to make the Philippines more attractive? Yes…but until they decide they want the tourist dollars, it isn’t likely to happen, and you’ll still see State Department Travel Warnings until they take it seriously and clean the NPA, MNLF and Abu Sayyaf out. They know where they are.

The survey would have been much more helpful if it allowed viewing the results per PAIRS of countries: “Given that I’m from country A, let’s see how the surfers from my country A viewed their experience in country B.”

The current results are just an aggregation of different point of views, and therefore very noisy.

And there ARE culture differences. French people might not be “nice” to Americans, yet “nicer” to Spanish speaking people. Here’s a better example: People from the USA would be “nicer” to fellow Americans. Therefore, if a large portion of the survey was based on American votes, it totally affected the results, and USA is now ranked in a better place than it really is…

P.S. The “nice” is put in quotation above, because the actions between two people from different cultures stem usually from culture differences, and not from national personality disorders… so it’s not “being nice” that was tested here, but “how I view the locals’ behavior in light of my own culture norms and values”.